By: Sheridan Kate Murray, Staff Writer
Over the weekend of Feb. 11, 2017, Wofford Greek organizations held their second annual spring formal recruitment. While last year’s recruitment process included both a fall and spring cycle, this marked the first time the Wofford Greek community has offered recruitment solely during the spring semester. Additionally, this past weekend was the first formal recruitment at Wofford conducted at the new Greek village. The recruitment weekend culminated in a Bid Day celebration on Monday, Feb. 13th in the Greek Pavilion.
Approximately 150 girls signed up for spring recruitment, visiting all four Panhellenic organizations Friday night at their respective houses. These first parties were intended to be open houses for each sorority, giving the young women a chance for initial mingling and conversation with each organization.
On Saturday, each Panhellenic organization held a sisterhood night, where they gave the young women more details about their respective philanthropies and focused more individually on sorority life.
On Sunday, each young woman visited the Preference parties of at least one organization. The recruitment process officially concluded with Bid Day, with each Panhellenic organization taking a new pledge class of approximately 30 women.
For the 60 percent of women involved in Greek life on Wofford’s campus, this year’s operations represent a marked change in the recruitment process. In some cases, Panhellenic members may found it hard to fully adjust to the idea of deferred recruitment, especially when traditional fall recruitment occurred for the last time only a year ago.
Molly Humphreys ‘19 of Zeta Tau Alpha says, “as someone who went through recruitment in the fall of my freshman year, I could absolutely see how some might think that they missed out on not being able to be in a sorority their first semester in college.” However, Humphreys went on to say she loved that “the girls that went through recruitment in the spring got to see for half a year how girls in all organizations interact with each other.”
While each Panhellenic organization had initial reservations about deferred recruitment, ultimately all participating sororities expressed satisfaction with the process. Ann Taylor ‘18, president of Kappa Delta, states that despite having a nuanced view of deferred recruitment, the members of her organization were very pleased with the results in the long run.
“I think that at first, the consensus among Greek organizations was that deferred Recruitment wasn’t a great idea,” she says. “However, [Kappa Delta] was pleasantly surprised and had the smoothest, most well-run Recruitment process up to date. I think having Recruitment in the spring has major pros and cons, but it worked out perfectly. I look forward to seeing how it goes in the coming years.”
According to Delta Delta Delta president Rebecca Bonham ‘18, an overall positive feeling towards deferred recruitment is prevalent within her organization.
“I think recruitment went really well! It was rocky getting going with all the changes and confusion this year, and throwing everyone into it the first week of classes after interim was a definite challenge. But it all came together in the end and I couldn’t be happier with the result,” she says.
Savannah Lewis ‘19, President of Kappa Alpha Theta, shares a similar sentiment:
“Recruitment was definitely crazy and overwhelming with it being our first full spring recruitment, but it was also incredible getting know all these girls and watching them find their homes on bid day.”
With no plans to transition back to fall recruitment in the foreseeable future, it is clear that the members of the Wofford Panhellenic community will have to continue to learn how to adapt to this new system. So far, delayed recruitment has been well received by the young women who went through the process.
